Monthly Archives: April 2007

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Robin Wood’s ↑cloth templates for “↑Second Life“ (SL) really are an ingenious gift for every wannabee clothes customizer. Still my project is to make a decent black suit for Fantomas, but it is always wise to start out humble. So today I went through the process of making a T-shirt by running through Robin’s according tutorial and using ↑his template. Offline I abhorr wearing T-shirts with print on them, but this is SL … on the front I put a Soviet poster showing the 1960s Fantomas. The poster resides on my HDDs since several years, and I can not … Continue reading →

Well, allow me to say, that I knew it! There of course are people out there who push the appropriation of “↑Second Life“ (SL) beyond the customization possibilities provided by Linden Lab. Although SL lives from user created content, and although Linden goes a certain piece of way to encourage creative content creation and developer practices, all of those issues and features do not constitute game modding in the (read: my) strict sense. Game modding starts when the customizers’ practices become similar to those of the initial game-designers and -developers—when you get down to the ‘real thing’, beyond, or … Continue reading →

Are you aware what a cheap tuxedo I am wearing? If anybody knows if there are decent male suits with a flexible jacket anywhere around in “↑Second Life“ (SL), please let me know. I am willing to pay—as a club dancer (see above—the bar is the place where you as an anthropologist get into talking with people ;-) I already earned some money I am ready to invest. Don’t you disappoint me by saying, “there is no such thing.” I am perfectly aware that the absolute majority of clothes in SL are for women, and I indeed never saw … Continue reading →

The day before yesterday and during the following night I spent more than nine hours apiece in “↑Second Life“ (SL), the days before also long times, simultaneously working on the second screen. Now I have to recall my earlier statement, that SL appears to be an empty world. Once you adjusted to the rules and principles of navigation in this world, you will easily (depending heavily on your own personality, naturally) find lots of company and people willing to talk, fool around, explore, and undertake things together. A feast for every psychologist interested in the peculiarities of online communication … Continue reading →

Frankly, I do not really know the reasons. But since four months the visits on my weblog here are steadily increasing. The average number of unique visitors for this month today is 2300 (bots and access with special http-status [me] not counted). Plus, people more and more are downloading ↵my Q3A-config. I would understand downloading the configs of Thresh, fatal1ty, cooller, and the like—but the config of a miserable player like me? Maybe the increase of popularity has to do with the airing of the short 6min feature about “↑Second Life“ (SL) I took part in on 29 March 2007? … Continue reading →

The manufacturer’s website offers a diagnostics tool, promising to have a look into the according hardware, detecting if more recent drivers are available and leading you through easy download and installation. All right, just for the fun of it, let’s try. Diagnostics says: “We are sorry, but the updates can not be installed on your system. Please contact your notebook manufacturer.” :-o Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an ATX big tower, not only containing a 700W power supply unit, but also enough free airspace I could stuff half of your company inside. There are mouse and keyboard attached, not to … Continue reading →

More or less regularly my friend at Take2—who got me into all that—asks me what I am thinking about the consoles vs. personal computer issue. As someone interested in game modding and reworking, the strongest form of the appropriation of technology, I naturally always am biased towards the personal computer, because it is by far more surrounded by “interpretative flexibility” … you can do more stuff with a personal computer than with a gaming console, that means ;-) Last thursday the relaunched ↑Adrenaline Vault published an ↑interview with John Romero, and he seconds “my” conviction: “Next-gen console is big but … Continue reading →

Just got an e-mail from my friend ↑Maurizio Teli, whom I learned to know ↑eastward in ↑Brno at ↑daylight. He presented a paper in the same workshop where I did, and I was completely blown away by his systematic and clear-cut thoughts on the methodology of doing ethnographical fieldwork online. If you are interested in this topic, head over to his website, dig down into his ↑publications section, download, read, and get wise. By the way, why does everybody (who was at the Cyberspace 2005 conference) in conversation with me mention those distracting girls there and adds a smiley? … Continue reading →

↑STOCKBURGER, AXEL. 2006. “↑The rendered arena: Modalities of space in video and computer games“. London: University of the Arts. Available online [.pdf | 3.7MB]: http://www.stockburger.co.uk/research/abstract.html abstract: During the last 30 years computer and videogames have grown into a large entertainment industry of economical as well as cultural and social importance. As a distinctive field of academic inquiry begins to evolve in the form of game studies, the majority of approaches can be identified as emerging either from a background of literary theory which motivates a concentration on narrative structures or from a dedicated focus on the rules in video and … Continue reading →